


Red is My Favorite Color

by crystalsexarch



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Crystal Exarch is an artist, Crystal Exarch likes to watch you fight, Established Relationship, Masturbation, Voyeurism, likes to watch you For Reasons, probably implied male
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 07:37:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21370534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalsexarch/pseuds/crystalsexarch
Summary: The Exarch lets the door to the Ocular click behind you and pulls his fingernails into his palms, staring where you’d stood just moments before. What you don’t know is how far his ears strain to catch your footsteps, how once he is certain you have left he opens the door, peeks through, and secures it once more. He can’t help but chuckle to himself as he heads to the Umbilicus.Suffice it to say, the Exarch has something planned and he's not quite ready to tell you about it. But fate may have it that you find out anyway.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch & Warrior of Light
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	Red is My Favorite Color

“Does it hurt?”

Raha is wrapping soft gauze around your wrist. The gash, long and half dry on your forearm, is nowhere near the beginning of his bind at the inner flesh of your thumb. Though his fingers, crystal and skin, are gentle as he circles closer to the cut, his eyes are heavy. Full of something you can’t quite place but recognize as _other_.

You nip at the air as he reaches the crest of the wound but bite back a stronger reaction, not keen on letting any grunt, whimper, or cry echo about the Ocular. Not under these circumstances. The Exarch’s ministrations tickle like a light burn. “You mean the wound or…?”

“The battle,” he says, letting the feathered strip float to meet your skin, pupils wide. With index and thumb together, he picks up the end and continues wrapping.

You squint and look at the ceiling as the gauze’s grip tightens. “You’re no stranger to warfare yourself.”

“Hmm.” A smile with bright, cold eyes. “I do not fight as you do, Warrior.”

You scrunch your lips, look high and left, high and right - but when you lift your eyebrows and sigh, he knows you’ll not question him further. Which is precisely what he wants.

He never lied about his scrying habit. You understand the invasion of your privacy was in some ways necessary, even after your summoning. Surely the intrusive behavior had saved you more than it shamed you. And what’s a little shame between lovers?

The thing is - you’ve never quite asked him to stop.

Aether tingles at your flesh. “That should suffice, then,” he says through a mist of magic. “What of your plans for the morrow?”

You examine his handiwork. Thick, secure bandages. Nicely wrapped, offering a good deal of mobility. Nothing that will interfere with your work, you think, testing and twisting your fingers. “Though it pains me,” you say, “I still think traveling south tonight will put me in a better place for the work ahead.”

“I suppose.” He smooths the lap of his robes and sighs. “So you’ll not be staying?” His chin down, eyes asking. Asking perhaps too perfectly. A glint catches your attention, but soon you lose it to his beautiful crimson. Will you fight to get it back? He watches. Will you fight?

The man you love covers his mouth for a yawn and struggles to keep his red eyes open.

....not tonight, you decide. You’ve quite the journey ahead, and you aren’t sure what to expect of the Empty. When you kiss him goodbye and feel the little press of nails on your neck, like a kitten accidentally extending his claws, you feel for another moment that your lover is perhaps up to something...but heed the call of Lakeland’s night sky anyway.

So you leave.

The Exarch lets the door to the Ocular click behind you and pulls his fingernails into his palms, staring where you’d stood just moments before. What you don’t know is how far his ears strain to catch your footsteps, how once he is certain you have left he opens the door, peeks through, and secures it once more. He can’t help but chuckle to himself as he picks up the leftover gauze from the Portal’s platform and heads to the Umbilicus.

There is art he has shown you. There is art he has not.

He picked up the hobby in earnest some forty years ago, though he’d first tried his hand not long after his arrival in the First. Back then, he had thought to hone his unsteady crystal arm through study of the field. _Misguided_ study, he soon found out. The wounds were too fresh, the anxiety too potent for him to watch clumsy lines leak from his fingertips. The sight of his own name scrawled onto parchment was enough to make him weep, and he abandoned the idea in a matter of months.

But after he had half a century to relearn patience and humility, he could bear it. And once he abandoned the idea of writing with his crystal-bitten hand, he found he was quite capable with his left. Even more so after years of practice.

Raha loves you. He would spend each moment with you if he could...but should your departure be a necessity, there are certain things he ought do in your absence. There are certain things he’s afraid to ask for, certain things he’s not sure he wants, certain things his body responds to regardless. And surely as you answered his interstellar pleas, he will answer himself.

With a grunt, he shifts a pile of books from a desk in the Umbilicus. It’s just one of many pieces he arranged for at your insistence - a modest bed, a table for two, matching chairs that wouldn’t have looked out of place at an Ishgardian cafe. You also helped him replace old shelves with new, and it is to one of these he draws close and closer, until he’s pressed his chest into the wood and knelt with his left hand prying behind its back. Fingers reach and grasp until finally, nuzzled between the wood and the wall, they close around a loosely sealed portfolio and bring it out into the light.

With a hum, Raha slides it onto the desk space he has cleared and works at the seal with his fingernails. For now, he is content to observe past works, knowing full well you’ll provide him more inspiration in the morning.

The seal gives. Raha holds the pack at an angle and lets slide the pieces within. If he tells you he has hidden works of art that make him blush, you will assume he speaks of something overtly self-indulgent and erotic. And that’s not to say these pieces _aren’t_...but were you to see them you’d be surprised by how little skin he’s painted. And by how much blood.

Raha blushes. The piece at the top of the stack. His latest and only partially complete, swathing colors claiming only the most important parts of his pencil sketch. The figure, undeniably you by your mail alone, straining against a rush of stabbing ice, left arm caught and cut - the same gash he’d just dressed for you - your right arm ever-thrusting that lance forward. So far, he’d paid particular attention to your snarling lips, the spray of blood on your cheek, the cracked gauntlet that let the cool blade into your well-muscled flesh.

It’s not that he wants to see you injured or pained. He is fascinated by the way you _endure_.

Fascinated. Yes...

The paint is cool beneath his gentle fingertips. He touches your face on the page like he does your real cheeks, lips, scars. And though a half-finished painting can’t touch back, his eyes grow heavy with a curious lust, just as he anticipated. Hand yet on the page, he tilts his head back and remembers the scene that inspired it. Oh, what he would give to have been there instead of in the Ocular, scrying and hard at the sight of you picking your blood-sprayed body off the ground, wiping your lip, and besting your enemies blow by adept blow. That was not the first time he had conjured your image for his own selfish pleasure. But it was the first time he had done it with a hot smile on his face and frenzied eyes. It was the first time he had called so loud upon orgasm that he was half-surprised you, ignorantly basking in your victory, didn’t turn to look upon his invisible window into your life.

He wants to finish this painting tonight so he can start a new one tomorrow, with fresh inspiration, but he finds he produces his best work undistracted. At least, that’s what he tells himself as he removes his hand from the page and places it instead at the pitch of his robes, sighing at the slight release of tension. A sing-song purr of pleasure later, and he realizes he’s going to need more. More touch, more pressure. Less fabric in the way.

Since he’s off to bed soon, anyway, he works at his outer layers, the white and red sash. No patience to fold them - he sends them to a corner of the room to be picked up later. Then he unclasps his black robe and draws it apart, leaning against the desk with his crystal arm, freeing his member with the other. Freeing it, stroking it. And he imagines.

Imagine - you with your fingers bone-frozen around your lance, your helmet chipped and cocked. Red at your chest, at your neck - yours and your enemy’s - giving you a color deeper than the flush of your cheeks. Than _Raha’s_ cheeks as he imagines. Imagine the sound you make rushing forward in retaliation, the sharp inhale of impact, the kiss of victory in your exasperated laugh. Imagine the electricity that runs through your muscles at the final blow, the euphoric aftershock of violence even amidst pain.

Yes, he is fascinated by those moments, the ones that hurt and glorify you. It’s hard to hold himself back as he thinks about how honed your body is, how that armor clothes a work of art. He sinks his chest onto the table, face pressed into the page, and rocks his hips against his hand.

Feeling foolish, he imagines jerking himself off on the side of some hypothetical battlefield. What if he hasn’t come by the time you best your foe? What if you spy him on the sidelines and toss your helmet aside, approaching with a tricky grin? He imagines you taking both of his hands and holding his wrists together just above his tail so you can slide him into your mouth and get him closer. In his mind’s eye - the mist of blood on your jawline, your breath still hot from battle. What if you, too, are burning beneath that mail? How impatient are you when he resists the fervor of your tongue and tenses and _tenses_ but never quite gets there?

In the Umbilicus, he laughs into the table with his lips smushed open and his fingers ever curled around his cock, but in his mind you have decided to remove just as much mail as you need to have your way with him. But what way? Growing closer, he alternates between two scenarios: in one, he sees you, a gloved hand pinning his shoulder, an ungloved working at his entrance; in the other you have opted to have him fuck you instead.

Raha’s tail twitches in time with his member. He wants to come, but he wants to see each fantasy through to its own conclusion, though he’s not sure he can manage. The visions come in debaucherous waves. You, pressing your armored chest into his back and entering his heat with the same vigor you display in battle, fresh blood coloring the crystal curled around his tense shoulder muscles. Your hand wrapped around him and teasing at his chest, floating lower until it finds his erection and works…

...just as he works _you_ in his twin fantasy. The push and pull of your body beneath him, your open huffing mouth. He knows he’s being loud. He knows he’s traded soft moans from breathy pants, that if someone were to enter the Ocular they’d certainly hear him approaching climax. He tongues the corner of his mouth and keeps the pressure mounting.

He imagines - victory is its own reward, but he wants to please you anyway. He wants you to come inside him or beneath him or with him. He wants you to feel the rhythm of his sex, to paint pleasure into his flesh with your fingernails. These are things you have done, things you _do_ in private, safe and calm. But how he’d love to have you fresh from the fray, not keen on tending to your wounds, but on _fucking him. On being fucked._

“Ah…”

He’s close. Cheek still pressed into the desk, he moves his crystal arm to push against a sensitive spot on his inner thigh and bends his knees. He’s so blind to anything but the battle-lust in his brain he never considers how obvious he may have been in your presence, how easy he is to read. He never considers you may have suspected something of his poorly hidden grin and lusty gaze.

And what’s most suspicious - how easily he let you leave. That’s what brings you back to the Tower before you’ve time enough to reach your mount.

Climax imminent, he becomes aware of the sweat on his neck only when the door to the Umbilicus clicks. Ears flick back and he winces, knowing only you would enter without knocking.

He can pretend that’s the reason he keeps rubbing himself over the edge, but at that point he knows there’s not a force in the world that could keep him from finishing. His name just escapes your lips.

“Raha?”

“Yes?!”

And then he surges against the desk, coming into his hand after a few more fevered strokes. Now he knows his face is as red as the paint it’s pressed against. _Should’ve finished the painting instead._ When he turns, he sees you with wide eyes of amusement, hand rubbing your forehead.

“This is what you...why you…?” you ask, shaking your head.

Instead of righting himself, he uses one hand to pull his robe back together and deflates against the desk, his tail twitching left and right beneath the fabric. “I...can...explain, my love.”

“And what’s this?” You step closer and coil your fingers into his hair while examining the piece half-hidden by his body. “I haven’t seen this one.”

“I’ve been...hiding it from you, you see.”

“This?” Nothing about the painting strikes you as embarrassing at first glance. And perhaps even astute observers wouldn’t have recognized anything of note. The Warrior of Light and Darkness, straining in battle. He’s certainly not the first to choose that subject. But then you see the wound and how very familiar it is. “This is…”

“Yes. Your battle at - “

“You’ve been...watching me then?”

“...I have.”

“Watching me and…”

He shifts beneath your hand. You use his movement to undo his braid. He continues squirming until he’s turned over, his back now against the desk and painting. Through a shy kitten smile he speaks. “I must admit there are certain qualities you exhibit in battle...that I’d not mind bringing to the bedroom.”

Though his comments have raised your eyebrows, you can’t help but admire his body, patched not only with crystal but now sweat and heat and blush. You plant your hand on his stomach and trace down. “I’ve got to be careful about bringing you into the field, then, haven’t I?”

“You are talking to a man who is _well-versed_ in self-restraint.”

“And yet, you lured me back here, did you not? Couldn’t help it, what with your sly expressions.”

He blinks. “I assure you, it was never my intention to - “

With a wicked smile, you catch his lips in your hand. “Tell me more about those _qualities_ you so admire. I may find myself willing to demonstrate a few.”


End file.
